So stop griping about it and donate. I donated $100 yesterday.

On the radio today it was reported the UK had pledged £15 million (about 25 million USD)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4133005.stm

The following link also contains this info.

"On Wednesday, the UK government pledged £15m ($29m) to help the first phase of the relief effort - making Britain the second largest donor after the US.

Many other governments and bodies - including Canada, European countries and the UN - are sending aid. "

I think I mentioned this before, but I've seen dozens of donations of $1,000, five or six of $5,000 and our record was a $10,000 donation by one person. That's just the cold hard cash, lots of people are (trying) to donate clothes and medical supplies, and many offering their houses to victims or even to fly over there themselves to help, whether they're professionals or just kind-hearted.

But I don't know if the donations by the major economies like the UK, Australia and the US include things like planes, personnel, medical aid and food, that sort of thing. Is it $15 million in cash, plus all the other actual supplies they send? Or is it $15 million worth of 'stuff', including cash?

Something like this really makes me wish I had some direct way to help. Donating money is well and good, but that doesnt quite feel the same as being able to step up and do something. Whether its a doctor or surgeon or a pilot flying in supplies, it really makes me wish I was able to help directly :(

I know exactly what you mean sailor.

In Australia, the government has already setup a co-ordinating system to facilitate medical staff who wish to volunteer their time and expertise. Several of the airlines are flying these volunteer teams to the affected areas free of charge.

The company I work for is even providing equipment and personnel to assist in setting up data networks (for the rescue teams) in some of the affected areas; staff are being flown out by the company.

Unfortunately, I don't think they need my rather specific skill-set. :(

It's a financial donation from me. That's all I can do.

Coincidentally, this year I purchased several "gift certificates" as stocking fillers for my immediate family. Each certificate represented a donation of $50 or so for such things as "A goat for a poor family"; "adult literacy classes for one person"; "schooling for family for one year" etc etc. The countries where these funds were to be spent included India and Sri Lanka.

Now I feel compelled to donate more for the disaster victims. A goat or an orchard is no good if the people themselves are dead. :-(


Mr Mephisto

For those who are upset about the "you aren't paying enough" that was said by a UN official... I actually saw him say these words live on Cooper 360.

At the time when he spoke the words the US government had only committed 3 million. They have since stepped up and committed more.

The reason for most of these mutterings is that despite many western countries being at the top of the list for amounts given to humanitarian and relief the relative amount is low for these countries.

The guy pointed out that what % if the GDP that is committed on an annual basis is roughly .02%... He pointed out that traditional tithes would be more in the range of 10%. He felt, like many do, that the west (he never once singeled out the US) can do more to make the world better. I don't know if he was including private donations in those amounts but would assume he wasn't.

Regardless of how you view it... there are a lot of people dead and a lot more who are going to die very soon if help doesn't arrive soon.

If you can, give money. Dropping off blankets, etc. aren't nearly as effective. Money can be spent where it is needed most and does wonders to help stimulate the local economy, that will be reeling after this terrible tragedy.

That clip is very chilling. Does anyone know if people were actually aware there was an earthquake?

This article is kinda encouraging...:
Yahoo

That's exactly the opposite of what our news organizations were reporting. So what's the truth?

That is just not true. Dead bodies CAN cause disease. The bacteria is what becomes dangerous.

It is an issue.

http://publications.paho.org/english/dead_bodies.pdf

See link. I could not get it to post here.

Well the WHO linked to that article from their site. I dunno.

I was thinking today, that I really hope those regions don't suffer any more disasters in the years to come. Unfortunately the world's quota of goodwill might be filled in this disaster and if something happens again in the near future I can't imagine the world will be so eager to help. It's sad.

That article is wishful thinking, easily disproven without much thought: what do you think makes dead bodies decompose?

Complete pants.

It's not that people will catch disases from dead bodies, but that dead bodies will contaminate drinking water.

This is the worst kind of disinformation. Why would anyone try to maintain hundreds of thousands of corpses pose no health hazard?

Mr Mephisto

The Amazon fund is up to $4.3 million with 71,000 donations. Thats about $60 a head. Im sending all the money I just got from selling this semester's textbooks as soon as the check comes in. I suppose they need it quite a bit more than I need a bigger beer fund.

And yeah Mephisto, I too think that is pretty damn misleading.

I've read quite a few articles written from the perspective of training recovery teams. They're motivated to calm fears about short-term contact vs. educating a population about long-term effects. WHO is correct about the small danger of contracting diseases while handling corpses but they're ignoring the secondary effects. (water supplies, scavengers, etc.)

I agree it's strange. Maybe they're concentrating on an accurate body count?

Or maybe on getting pictures and/or other records from every corpse before people just bury them as fast as they can, for the sake of anyone looking for the bodies later. It'd probably be a Good Thing to know who was burried where. :| They did something similar after a circus fire in Hartford Connecticut many years ago.

Now that Ill agree with. I think it would be a good thing (though slightly impractical at this point) to record images of the buried along with the locations of the grave they are in so that identification/location can be done later. By all means, get the bodies in the ground as quickly as possible, but it would be a wonderful thing to be able to have some identification so that relatives can come back later and figure out where their loved ones are.

Yeah, it might not be possible, agreed. That's a lot of corpses, but they're spread out a lot, I think. OTOH, it's hot there. And lots of these bodies spent some time in the water. Yuck. Swelling. Probably not eaten much, at least at first, since the fish weren't doing too well around then either.

What about Turkey a couple of years ago....that was a big one.

Wow, the US has upped their relief contribution to $350 million. That's a boatload of cash, and is very nice to hear.

U.S. Boosts Tsunami Aid Tenfold to $350M

I assume this doesn't even count the untold millions that people will be donating through charities, right? This is coming straight from the federal government, I would think.

Any wager on how many faked death insurance claims will be filed after a disaster like this with huge mass burials. Lot's of visiting tourists who could have easily gotten swept away.

Good way to just start a new life if you were there on vacation or business. Call your wife and say file the $1Million claim and I'll meet you in the Bahamas.

OK guys. Humans are meat to. We spoil just like any other piece of meat. If I stick you in a cubicle sized room that and stuck in 3 dead pigs and left you in there for a week with very little food and water just like the ppl in Asia, then you would get sick from something. Now take those dead carcasses and turn them into 120,000+ human bodies and expose them to the chili(?) nights and warm days when the sun is out. The meat will start to spoil and attract flies which attract diseases. And just think of all the blood spilled in the waters. Surely there's SOME form of waterborn diseases coming from dead bodies and their blood coming into contact with your eyes, mouth, open wounds, etc.

So YES I do think that the dead bodies can result in even more diseases. Just my $0.02.

- Undercover_Man

My father had a friend that did that in the Philippines in the 70s/80s... he was eventually caught, even saw him on a 60 minutes spot about insurance fraud.

I can say that it's not that easy based on another friend who's husband fell overboard on a boat in a lake. It took 7 years for her to get paid out. 7 years of extreme financial difficulty and roadblock after roadblock of the insurance company not paying out.

If you look at the charlatans of 9/11 they were eventually caught.

I agree however that someone will take advantage of this, maybe not for insurance fraud but just to start a clean slate or even assume someone else's identity ala The Beach ironically shot in Phi Phi, Thailand.